Friday, 5 January 2018

Friday Is Rock'n'Roll London Day: A Look At #NickDrake's London

Friday is Rock'n'Roll London Day on The Daily Constitutional!The Rock'n'Roll London Walk meets at Tottenham Court Road Station every Friday at 2pm.

DC Editor Adam writes…I have been listening to Nick Drake for more than 30 years now – and I am constantly surprised at how many people are still unfamiliar with his work.

Despite one of his songs featuring on a TV ad, and despite the monthly music mags putting him on their covers, he seems fame-resistant 44 years on from his death at the age of 26.

His records sold poorly during his all-too-brief lifetime, but since his premature death – the coroner's verdict was suicide by overdose – he has become something of a cult figure.

Why Isn't He A Big Star?

Is it the voice? Is it too haunting? Are the songs just too melancholy? Is it the fact that we can't quite pigeonhole him into one genre? He's not quite singer-songwriter material in the James Taylor model, but he is partly that. He's not an out-and-out folkie, but folk is certainly one of the rising signs of his music. He can even be a touch middle-of-the-road. There's blues in there, too.

Is it the fact that no footage exists of him performing? In our YouTube age, do some have trouble ingesting music if they can't "see" it?

For me, this last merely adds to his enigmatic appeal.

The Unbearable Weight of Youth

I listened to Nick
Drake yesterday – he came up on shuffle on my fast-fading old iPod.

As I stated, I’ve been listening to
his music for nearly 30 years and I thought his work was as familiar to me as
the back of my hand.

Yesterday I heard
something new.

I first heard Five
Leaves Left (his first album) in 1987 in my pal Jamie’s room in halls of
residence at college. Jamie had a cassette and the music is indelibly
associated for me with that time. College time.

And back then Nick
Drake sounded so old to me. So experienced and world weary.

When he cropped up on
shuffle on the iPod yesterday it suddenly struck me: the freshness, the clarity in
his singing can only be the work of a young man. Little more than a boy.

Thirty years on from that low-lit, smoky college room, he seemed so young, so innocent and exposed. Where I once heard his songs as written with the weight of the world upon them, I suddenly saw them carrying a much heavier burden: the sometimes unbearable weight
of youth.

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Nick Drake's London

Drake was born in Rangoon and raised in Warwickshire. He was schooled at Marlborough and Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. He moved to London in the late 60's. Click the map below to find a few locations associated with his life and career in London…

A Short Introduction To The Music of Nick Drake…A playlist featuring my very favourite of his songs taken from his three studio albums.